‘Doctor Dolittle’ and ‘The Collector’ Actress Dies: Samantha Eggar Was 86

British actress Samantha Eggar has died.

Her daughter, actress Jenna Stern, told The Hollywood Reporter she died on Wednesday at her home in Sherman Oaks. Eggar was 86.

Known for roles in Doctor Dolittle and The Collector, Eggar had struggled with illness for the past five years but “lived a long, fabulous life,” said Stern. Born Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar on March 5, 1939, in Hampstead, England, she was raised in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Eggar lived in the countryside with family friends during the war and spent 12 years in a convent where her love of the arts began as she was exposed to plays, concerts, and poetry.

While she received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her mother would not let her go as she didn’t want her daughter to become an actor. Eggar was allowed to enter art school to study painting and drawing, and was later hired as a fashion artist after graduation. One day, Eggar’s cousin drove her to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts. “He said, ‘Here’s the door … get in there. Go and do it,’” she once recalled. “‘Do those bits you’ve done. You’ve got your own version of Ophelia. And you’ve got some poems you’ve learned.’ So I did. And the next thing I know, I’m accepted.”

Eggar was offered a role in Cecil Beaton’s play Landscape With Figures, which is about painter Thomas Gainsborough, in 1959, before completing the program at Webber Douglas. She caught the eye of producer Betty E. Box, who offered her a role as a slutty college coed in Young and Willing in 1962. That was followed by Doctor in Distress in 1963 and Dr. Crippen the same year, and then Psyche 59 in 1964.

In 1965, she landed the role of Miranda Grey in the William Wyler-directed psychological horror film The Collector opposite Terence Stamp. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where both Stamp and Eggar won Best Actor and Best Actress. Additionally, Eggar won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture- Drama and was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost to Julie Christie for Darling.

Also in the ‘60s, Eggar did numerous films, including Return From the Ashes, Walk, Don’t Run, and Doctor Dolittle. Eggar moved to Los Angeles in 1972 to continue to acting career, starring opposite Yul Brynner in the 1972 adaptation of The King and I on CBS. She also played Phyllis Dietrichson in the 1973 ABC remake of Double Indemnity.

Other credits include Ragin’ Cajun, Dark Horse, Inevitable Grace, The Phantom, The Astronaut’s Wife, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, The Dead Are Alive!, A Name for Evil, The Uncanny, Curtains, and The Brood, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Commander in Chief.

Aside from acting, Eggar was a lector/lay minister at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills and at Saint Francis de Sales Parish in Sherman Oaks, where she led weekly meditations until the pandemic. Eggar was married to American actor Tom Stern from 1964 to 1971, and he died last year.

And “to know Sam was to understand her love for animals, all creatures great and small,” her family said. “Her beloved pups ranged from Great Danes to Dalmatians, street rescues to her adored bulldogs, their leashes still hanging in memoriam, long after their passing.”